


A Meeting and a Letter

by Sandel



Category: Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post-Canon, Yuletide 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-16 09:49:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13051560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandel/pseuds/Sandel
Summary: Fanny goes to see a play, and ends up in a little drama of her own.





	1. A Meeting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pdavidp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pdavidp/gifts).



> Hello, pdavidp!
> 
> This was a challenge to write - but an enjoyable one! I learned so much about 19th century England when doing my research for this story, haha! (Any mistakes remaining are entirely my own and so on...) I hope you'll enjoy it!
> 
> Happy Yuletide!

Soon after arriving in Bath for his annual visit to take the waters, young Mr. Thomas Bertram learned that the Royal Theatre was to give the play _Lovers’ Vows_ that season. Though age and misfortune had made Mr Bertram mellow out somewhat compared to his wild youth, he still, even at the ripe old age of thirty-four, had enough sense of mischief to make the idea of seeing that specific play an object of particular delight. He immediately made a point of inviting his younger brother and sister-in-law to see it with him when they came to visit him at the watering place.

Mr. _Edmund_ Bertram was perhaps less apt to be amused by his youthful indiscretions than his brother, and that very play was for him a painful reminder of not just disappointing his father, but also of the first woman he loved – and as that woman wasn’t his wife, he wasn’t too keen on being reminded of her. Had the decision been up to him alone, therefore, he would have been likely to refuse to see the play. His wife Fanny could tell as much from his voice and his look as he told her of the invitation. With a sense of decorum more sensitive than most, her first instinct was to agree that it would be improper for them to go (and she too had her share of painful memories from the time the Bertram household had played at being actors). But then she hesitated.

“If the prospect makes you uncomfortable, my dearest, of course we won’t go,” she told her husband at last, “but I actually _would_ so love to see that play acted for real just once – and with real actors at that! That play _was_ my very first experience of the theatre, you know.”

At such sweetness, Edmund could but smile. Almost a decade into their marriage he still cherished the childlike joy and wonder that his wife expressed every time they went to see a play together. Her sense of beauty was as sharp as her sense of decorum, and he didn’t have the heart to deny her an experience of it.

* * *

Accordingly, a fortnight later found their little party of three standing outside the theatre hall, prepared for a night of enjoyment. With her eyes closed, Fanny drank in the evening air. Around her she could hear the hustle and bustle of the crowd, soon to turn from a mass of people into an audience, captivated together by the fates of Agatha Friburg and her associates. She loved this – if she were to go to the theatre every night, like her sister-in-law Julia would often write about doing when she visited London with her husband, it would leave her beyond exhausted, but in small doses it was heaven. She’d just opened her eyes again with her head tilted upwards, so she could see the stars when she heard her husband speak out in astonishment.

“My _God_ , is that…?”

Surprised at such strong language from her clergyman husband, Fanny turned to Edmund and started at his face, white as parchment. She turned to follow his line of sight and saw the back of a lady dressed in the latest style, with her dark hair artfully put up. There was something familiar – and disconcerting – about the woman’s slight figure, but Fanny couldn’t quite place her until the turned so that the side of her face became visible. It was Miss Mary Crawford!

Fanny turned back to her husband. For a moment Edmund’s face was frozen in shock, staring unseeingly at the woman he had once loved. Then he tore his gaze away and looked down at Fanny instead, his eyes all panic and imploration.

“Perhaps I should go find our seats,” he said, his voice quivering.

“No, let me,” Tom began to say, but Edmund ignored him, holding his wife’s gaze.

As can often be the case with husbands and wives who share a true bond of love, the Bertrams had the capacity to converse with each other without a single word passing over either of their lips, and from the way Edmund looked at her Fanny soon realised that he was asking for her permission to get away.

“Go,” she whispered.

Edmund gave her a look of relieved thankfulness, and then he was gone, leaving Fanny with a confused Tom and a difficult situation to handle.

Fanny glanced over towards Miss Crawford and her party again. Fanny recognised Miss Crawford’s sister, Mrs. Grant, now rounder than she’d been when she had lived in the parsonage that was now Fanny’s own home, and could see one other lady and a gentleman, neither of whom she knew by either sight or name. Thankfully here was no sign of Mr. Crawford, the brother of Miss Crawford and Mrs. Grant, who had once proposed to Fanny and then proceeded to seduce her married cousin – but perchance he, like Edmund, had gone into the theatre hall to find seats for his party? Fanny was not sure that she would be able to even see him without making an embarrassing spectacle of herself. She was just turning away, trying to think of a way to get herself and Tom to slip out of sight without alerting him to what was going on, when Miss Crawford happened to glance in Fanny’s direction.

Their eyes met. Memories of nine years ago flooded Fanny’s mind, stirring up long forgotten emotions. Looking into Miss Crawford’s dark eyes she was eighteen again, nervous and confused and mortified. Then she heard Tom gasp at her side, showing that he too, finally, had caught wind of the little silent drama that was playing out next to him. That was enough to get Fanny to snap out of her involuntary and unwelcome reveries, and come back to the here and now, with the realisation that she had a choice to make. Any acknowledgement of their acquaintance would have to come from her and Tom; after Mr. Crawford ruining her cousin (and now sister-in-law) Maria, it would take some gall for his sisters to approach any of the Bertrams in public – surely not even the often audacious Miss Crawford could presume differently?

As if to concede the point, Miss Crawford just then lowered her eyes, a dark blush spreading over her pretty features, and turned back to her party, clearly ready to ignore and be ignored. Yet, to completely deny the acquaintance – it would be a harsh indictment of Miss Crawford and Mrs. Grant, who hadn’t, in fact, done anything truly reprehensible themselves. Fanny had always found Miss Crawford’s behaviour reproachable, but giving people the cold shoulder wasn’t in Fanny’s usual repertoire of behaviours, and Miss Crawford’s mortification emboldened her to venture a greeting and a few pleasantries – and if there perhaps was an element of curiosity that influenced her choice, who could judge her?

Five quick steps took Fanny into greeting distance, Tom following confusedly in her wake.

“Miss Crawford, Mrs. Grant,” said Fanny, curtseying.

Mrs. Grant started terribly when she saw who had spoken her name, but she collected herself to return Fanny’s curtsey together with her sister, who avoided Fanny’s eye but was otherwise collected.

“Mrs Bertram,” the two ladies replied together.

So they knew about Fanny’s marriage to Edmund – Fanny could not help taking some perhaps indelicate gratification in that. (Whether she also took some secret pleasure in her naming of “Miss Crawford” not being corrected, we will leave to her own conscience to consider and judge.) Up close Miss Crawford was as beautiful as ever, though her eyes sparkled less and her smile was more strained than Fanny could remember to ever have seen it. She was clearly feeling the awkwardness of their unexpected meeting keenly, and Fanny took some courage in that. She gave her condolences for Dr. Grant’s passing, and answered the sisters’ hesitant and confused questions about her family. Tom greeted them as well, but otherwise kept an uncharacteristically low profile, not even venturing a joke about the play that had once again drawn the Bertrams and the Crawfords together.

Once she’d offered her condolences over Dr. grant’s passing to Mrs. Grant, Fanny steeled herself and turned towards Miss Crawford again.

“Is your brother here with you?” she said, and she was quite proud of the airy tone she managed to keep her voice in as she asked about the presence of the last man in the world she would ever want to meet again.

Miss Crawford immediately shook her head.

“We don’t see him much these days,” she said with an exaggerated earnestness that seemed to want to convey a message beyond the words used.

Fanny tampered down an absurd impulse to ask whether he wrote his sisters satisfactory letters, but as she couldn’t come up with anything else to say, the mention of Mr. Crawford seemed to have put an end to their stilted conversation.

Into their awkward silence Edmund, returning to fetch Fanny and Tom to their seats, came like a saving angel. He gave the sisters the barest of nods, his face locked in a painful grimace, the ladies curtseyed again, and then the ordeal was over as suddenly as it had began. Without quite realising how it had happened, Fanny found herself in their box. Poor Fanny was still all in a confusion, however, and it wasn’t until the second act that she could even begin to follow along with the story playing out on the stage in front of her. And perhaps she in that still fore better than her husband, who fidgeted beside her in his seat all through the play. As soon as the play was finished he had them leave for their lodgings in such a hurry that they quite offended Mr. and Mrs. Nowell, who noticed the Bertram party in the crowd but went unnoticed when they tried to hail them.


	2. A Letter

In the two months following her chance meeting with Miss Crawford, Fanny quite successfully managed to put encounter out of her mind. That was, until Miss Crawford sent her a letter.

Fanny had been out on a charitable visit, and when she stepped into the Mansfield parsonage, her maid informed her that a letter had arrived for her. This piece of news filled Fanny’s head with thoughts of Maria and William. Her brother was immediately ruled out as the direction was written in an elegant lady’s hand, and when she inspected it closer she could tell that it wasn’t from her cousin either. At this point Fanny was rather perplexed, as she didn’t have many acquaintances living far enough away to warrant writing rather than visiting, and she knew the handwriting of all her regular correspondents well. This writing she didn’t recognise at all, though something about it stirred a faint sense of unease in her chest.

That sense only grew as Fanny opened the letter and began to read.

* * *

_Mrs. Frances Bertram_  
_Dear Madam,_

_This is Mary Crawford writing you, and I can easily imagine the disgust you might feel right now, reading this – though your excellent breeding surely, as always, prevents it from showing on your face._ I _never could guess correctly at what you were feeling, at least._

 _Oh, this is going all wrong – I hardly know what to write to you without insulting you or bringing up subjects that are sure to be at least as painful to you as they are to me! I suppose it is most presumptuous of me to write to you at all, and yet seeing you in the flesh so recently has inspired in me a wish, nay, a_ need _, to reignite the acquaintance that you – to my great surprise – did not deny when we met. Though you’ve always been the sweetest of creatures I couldn’t have dreamed that even you, after all that has happened between our families, would be able to receive my sister and me with such kindness. And now here I am, demanding another indulgence from you!_

_And yet, I could not help myself, I had to write to you. The idea has possessed me since it first came into my mind a week ago, and nothing I do can distract me from it for long. As you know all too well I’m someone who’s given to giving in to my temptations, and this has not yet changed, however much my dear sister has done her very best to inspire better behaviour in me. (I have not told her that I am writing to you!) We have a comfortable life together now, even after the sad loss of my brother-in-law, sharing a household, and as I’ve given up the thought of ever marrying she has close proximity and intimate sisterhood on her side in affecting a change in my character and dispositions. She is working on me slowly but surely, and has indeed made enough progress for me to blush at the way I behaved towards you and those close to you all those years ago, and I suppose that this is the place to tell you how very sorry I am about what I did, and what happened. And if I had as much influence over the choices of other actors as I once thought I did, things would have ended up differently._

_Oh, I read over what I’ve just written and it reads like idle flattery – or worse, a malicious hint at the very subject I swore to myself to not bring up in this letter! Please believe me, Mrs. Bertram, when I tell you that I do not intend to bring you pain in writing this, though I realise that I most likely am. And for that I am sorry too, I suppose. It would probably be for the best if I were to throw this paper into the fire and forget about this mad idea, but there is something about you that impels me to reach out. I suppose I might be in need of a friend. My sister is as good and steady a woman as ever live, but other than her, I’m afraid I don’t have many people around me to appeal to my better nature. This, I suppose, is why I’m so keen on securing your correspondence. My friends are dear creatures, but their morals and characters are not as upstanding as yours – but whose is? And with that the case, I can’t but ask of you the favour of joining in my sister’s project for my betterment, by writing to me and thus letting your goodness rub off on me, like I felt it doing – but resisted – when we last associated._

_I’ve taken more liberties with your good nature in this letter than I ever intended to, but then again even writing to you at all is taking such a great liberty that the content of the letter hardly can make any difference. I tell myself that I won’t be awaiting any reply, but I do not think I’ll be able to prevent myself from hoping to see your sweet, round hand in a week or so hence. And with that, I can but assure you that I am,_

_Yours, etc. etc.,_  
_Mary Crawford_

* * *

What a very singular letter! Fanny quite didn’t know what to make of it. In fact she couldn’t even finish it in one sitting; she would read a few sentences, make an annoyed exclamation, put the letter down, and then, her curiosity getting the better of her, picking it right back  up again. And before she knew it, she had read it through three times. Each readthrough more than the one before it, the letter brought up agitated feelings of a kind she had not felt for several years, except for that brief moment when her eyes had met Miss Crawford’s outside the theatre.  She was angry, embarrassed, flattered, confused and amused all jumbled together,  and over it all lay a sense of pity over Mary’s poor sense in writing such a letter, and her poor heart coercing her to do it.

The sound of her husband’s returning brought a more acute alarm to Fanny’s confusion and distress, and as she hurriedly put the letter away, she attempted to put her thoughts of it away as well. This was easier said than done, but she wouldn’t on any occasion have Edmund find out about the letter before she had herself had more time to think over it. Otherwise, whenever she needed advice or consultation, Edmund was always her surest bet for good advice, and her closest confidant. But in this case, she would have to find someone else to confide in.

Once again Fanny found herself having to make a difficult choice concerning Miss Crawford – and once again her charitable nature got the better of her. Still, exchanging a few pleasantries outside a theatre hall was different than composing a full letter, and it took her more than a week, and a consultation at Mansfield Park with her sister Susan, to get to the point of being able to put pen to paper, and after that more than three days to get very far past the first “ _Dear Miss Crawford._ ” But in less than a fortnight she nevertheless ended up with a very respectable, if a bit short, letter to send. And when she did send it, she found herself looking forward to a reply with as much curiosity as perturbation.

**Author's Note:**

> So, there we go! I hope the ending was happy enough!
> 
> : )
> 
> Also, this is where I thank my beta; thanks, dude!


End file.
